The Cost of Avoiding Microplastics

A placenta is, by definition, new tissue: It grows from scratch over nine months of pregnancy. So when a team of researchers found microplastics in every human placenta they sampled, they were a little bit shocked, Matthew Campen, a professor at the University of New Mexico and a researcher on the team, told me. But in hindsight, he thinks perhaps they shouldn’t have been. Microplastics are in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the rain and snow falling from the sky, the food we eat. They are in the dust in our house, the paint on our walls, the cosmetics in our medicine cabinets. They slough off from dental aligners, the toothpaste on our toothbrush, the toothbrush itself. Since his placenta study, Campen has found that microplastic is in human testicles and, detailed in a paper that has yet to be published, in human brains.

Scientists have now been studying microplastic for 20 years, since a paper in 2004 first used the term, and have started on nanoplastics, the vanishingly small versions that build up in organs. In that time, human exposure to microplastic has been increasing exponentially; by 2040, the amount of plastic in the environment could double. A robust body of research now links chemical compounds (such as phthalates and bisphenols) that are shed from plastic to a wide array of human health impacts, including hormone disruption, developmental abnormalities, and cancer. But scientists know far less about what the health impacts of the plastic fragments embedded in our organs and coursing through our blood might be.

They are, however, wary. Sheela Sathyanarayana, a physician at Seattle Children’s Research Institute who studies the effects of plastic on pregnancy outcomes and children’s health, told me that what we stand to learn about microplastic is unlikely to be good—it’s probably at least an irritant that, like the small particles in wildfire smoke, can cause inflammation. A new paper reviewing emerging evidence about microplastics, published today in Science, anticipates that researchers will know more in five to 10 years about microplastics’ health effects. However, that doesn’t mean the world should wait for more damning evidence to emerge, the paper’s lead author, Richard Thompson, a marine-biology professor at the University of Plymouth, told me. Animal models are clearly pointing toward the potential for harm, he said, and we are not, biologically speaking, that different from those animals. “We could spend billions on experiments trying to understand that harm in humans,” he said. “But when we’ve done that, we’re still arguably going to need to fix the problem.”

As it stands, though, individuals are left to mediate their own relationship to plastic, in a world where plastic is the default. Even reducing one’s exposure can take scrupulous research and, often, money. Avoiding plastic in daily life has become essentially a luxury.

I recently went through the painstaking process of finding a couch that wasn’t covered in some kind of polymer “performance” material, eventually settling on a leather option. It was already far more expensive than standard microfiber or polyester-twill options, and I only later realized that the foam cushions within the leather were, like most couches, made of polyurethane foam that, for all I knew, was releasing plumes of microplastic dust each time I plopped down. Couches are available with plastic-free wool cushions, but those were out of my price range. Okay, I thought, I’ve done the best I could. Still, I think about it every so often when I sit down.

You can repeat this type of reasoning with any manner of home good. Purity is impossible, and half measures feel better than nothing but also like failure. And it’s all expensive. If a family is expecting a baby and wants, reasonably, to buy plastic-free baby products—given everything humanity is learning about the possible impact of plastic on fetal and child development—they would have to be relatively rich. You can get an organic, plastic-free crib mattress for $1,379; one made of polyester fiber and wrapped in vinyl costs $35. Or consider your floor. Some 95 percent of modern carpets are made from synthetic fibers—in other words, plastics—which flake off microplastic throughout their life. Vinyl flooring is better than carpeting, because it can more easily be kept clean. But vinyl is also a plastic and can emit harmful compounds including phthalates, which may interfere with children’s development and reproductive health and are associated with allergic conditions such as asthma, Sathyanarayana told me. In recent years, several large retailers have offered phalate-free vinyl flooring options, in which the problematic phthalate was swapped for a different compound which appears to be less concerning. But the least concerning option is either buying natural-fiber carpets, which are more expensive, or installing hardwood floors.

When Sathyanarayana talks with the families she sees as a pediatrician, she tells them to avoid the big things: Don’t use plastic in your kitchen, if you can help it, because ingestion is a major route for microplastics into the body. She suggests that they not eat food out of plastic containers. (Babies can use stainless-steel plates and cups, for instance.) And especially don’t heat food in plastic, to avoid ingesting plasticizers—chemicals added to plastic to make them soft and flexible. But another big one to avoid is heavily processed food, which may be contaminated with more microplastic simply by undergoing more manufacturing steps in modern, plastic-heavy factories. It’s good advice, but it also requires money and time: Wooden utensils are more expensive than plastic utensils, glass containers are more expensive than plastic containers, and so on. Avoiding processed food means making food, which also takes time, a luxury that some families simply don’t have.

Sathyanarayana acknowledged that following her advice is tough. “It puts the burden on the consumer, because our regulatory system has not accounted for these types of chemicals,” she said. “That kind of burden is really tough. When you’re pregnant and trying to think of so many different things, it’s a heavy burden to carry.”

Rather than panic, Campen advised, people should not stress so much about microplastics. Stress, he reminded me, is also a health hazard. And given that we move in a wall-to-wall-plastic world, we know too little to worry, as individuals, over what might be uncontrollable. “Knowing what I know, if I freaked out about it, I would quickly lose my mind,” he said.

Still, despite this breezy advice, Campen admitted that he does stress about the systemic side of the plastics problem. “I worry about the global problem more than my personal health,” he said. “We are in no position to make a change to this exponentially growing problem. That’s what causes me the most stress.” At this point, only major government intervention to limit plastic production could stem the tide, he and both other researchers I spoke with said. Crib mattresses that cost nearly $1,400 are not going to solve it, although they could, in theory, lower the concentration of some of these compounds in your child’s blood. Eventually, Sathyanarayana thinks, companies will catch on, and cheaper plastic-free options will come to market—but that’s a slow process, and few materials stand any chance against the basement-floor pricing of plastic polymers, driven by the profusion of cheap oil and gas used to make it. And if, in a decade, scientists do find that these tiny particles have posed a threat all along, many people will wonder why no one did anything about them sooner. By then, a whole additional generation will have been born into a polymer world, wrapped in plastic since the womb.